Hydro-Biogeochemical and Environmental-Management Functions of Wetland Networks in Landscapes

A main application goal of ecohydrological science is to amplify opportunities of achieving water quality improvements, biodiversity enhancements and sustainable development, by improved understanding and use of ecosystem properties as a management tool. This paper draws on and synthesizes main result implications for the function and possible enhanced use of wetland networks in the landscape as such a tool, from a series of hydro-biogeochemical and environmental economics studies of nutrient/pollutant loading and abatement in different Swedish hydrological catchments. Results show large potential of wetland networks to reduce the cost of abating nutrient and metal loads within and from hydrological catchments, and emphasize some main research questions for further investigations of actual possibilities to realize this potential. The questions regard in particular the ability of wetland networks to extend the travel times and reduce the uncertainty of hydrological nutrient/pollutant transport through catchments.The paper further presents and discusses some main joint conclusions of the participants in a recently held International Workshop on Ecohydrology and Integrated Water Resource Management (1) at the Navarino Environmental Observatory in Messinia, Greece (2), regarding essential goals for collaborative international efforts in wetland network research. The goals include to investigate on different spatiotemporal scales and in different world regions: a) the dynamics of natural and managed wetland networks across a gradient of different climate, human disturbance, energy and organization conditions; b) the reciprocal interactions between wetland networks and associated hydrological catchments; c) how climate change and different human activities in the wetland network catchments influence these interactions (in b) and generally the ecohydrology of individual wetlands and the whole wetland networks; and d) the ecosystem services provided by networks of wetlands.